Is an iPad still worth it for ebook lovers?

It could go all day on a single charge. I could carry all my teaching materials—books, music, movies, everything—on one clipboard-sized device. I read on it, watched movies, played games. It truly was the ‘laptop replacement’ I always wanted—a do-it-all device that was light, beautiful and went all day on a single charge.

Now, here we are, a half-decade and change later, and…well, for the first time, I find myself wondering whether I would replace my iPad if something happened to it.

A new iPad Air 2, not even the latest model, goes for $499 CAD on Apple Canada—more, even, than the first one I bought all those years ago.

Even a new iPad Mini is almost $350. That’s a lot of money for something that, more than ever, is a want and not a need. So, what’s changed? Why is an iPad not worth it anymore? For me, there have been a few sea changes.

1) In the Cloud, you can access content everywhere. This has been the first big change. I used to carry my iPad around with me because I stored my content locally. Ten CDs worth of music, all on my one device! And now, every classroom I teach in is equipped with a laptop and SMARTboard. Teachers are not using CDs anymore. They are not using local music files ripped from a CD. All of that stuff is on YouTube now, and you can project it into the giant ‘tablet’ that’s mounted on the wall.

2) For most real work, you still need a keyboard. Sad, but true. For the kind of work I do, which is mostly writing and editing, with the nod to page layout when I am making teaching books, I still need a mouse and a keyboard. I did have a keyboard which was compatible with my iPad. I still do have it, actually. But it added on another hundred bucks to the setup. My netbook was a half the cost, came with the keyboard built in, is much pleasanter to work on, and is small enough and light enough to have about the same form factor for carrying around as the iPad plus keyboard did. And I have money left over to buy a book-sized tablet if I want something small and cute to read on.

3) The form factor is wrong for a book reader. When I was still doing actual work on the iPad, I liked having the full-sized screen. But now that I’m not, I’m finding the full-size tablet to be a little much for my leisure tasks. I want to read ebooks, check Facebook and look at YouTube videos while I’m lying on the couch, and that’s pretty much it. I appreciate that they have made the iPad fairly light and sleek. But I am finding, especially now that I am in the later stage of my pregnancy, that it isn’t comfortable to lie on the couch with it. It’s too cumbersome to hold it one-handed, and when I try and rest it on my lap, it slides onto my tummy and pokes. A seven-inch Android I can hold in one hand is much easier.

4) Cross-platform compatibility has improved tremendously. Let’s face it: other people make nice stuff too these days. And advances on the software side have made them not all that different to use than the iPad is. I don’t buy indie apps anymore; I got burned too many times by one-guy developers who never updated, and then one day the app stopped working and my money was gone. So when I do buy an app, it’s from a bigger company. And all of them have Android versions of the apps I use on iOS. Many of them—Kindle, Twitter, OneNote, Facebook—are free. I’ve played on both the Fire tablet and the Beloved’s pure Android one, and once I got my homescreen set up the way I wanted it, the various tablets were virtually indistinguishable. And the cheapest Android device we have (the Fire tablet) is $350 cheaper than the iPad is.

5) The days of app-everything are over. The Beloved’s last rationale for ‘I would buy an iPad again’ was, ‘What about the children?’ ‘There are more apps on the Apple store,’ he declared the other day. ‘And for a kid, more is better.’ Is it, though? We know two kids who love their iPads. The map-obsessed five-year-old spends 90 percent of his device time playing in Google Earth, with a little bit of kiddie app usage on car trips. The three-year-old spends most of her device time watching Barbie videos on YouTube. You can’t tell me they couldn’t do either of those things on a much cheaper device than an iPad. And, as for the ‘more apps’ thing, well, I’m not sure I’d really want to encourage that, you know? I’d be happy with having a curated selection of appropriate stuff I install for them, along with the YouTube Kids app and perhaps a book reader. I’m not sure I really want them spending all their time on ‘more apps’ as a thing.

We’ll keep the iPad for now, primarily because we have a relative we speak to often who is very attached to the Facetime app. But when it goes, I’d be interested to see if we can convert him to Skype instead. An iPad is too expensive to buy just for Facetime. And if I’m not using it to actually do any work, I’d rather have a book-sized device than a work-sized one. I know the iPad Mini would meet that need, and capably. But the same experience can be had for much, much less money. So, is an iPad still worth it? No. I don’t think is.

14 thoughts on “Is an iPad still worth it for ebook lovers?”

Unless you’re using an Amazon tablet, the security is pretty weak on these other tablets (the Amazon tablet is fine for kids but way more complicated to set up and use than it should be.

I have an iPad Mini (series 4) and I’m extremely happy with it. What I’ve learnt with other companies is that despite there being more Android tablets out there, most of their access and money come from iOS devices. That’s even through the web browser.

Here’s one other option you might want to consider, a iPhone 6 plus. That’s more or less the perfect size for reading. (and I agree with you about reading with the bigger iPads. I looked at a iPad Pro and it was too awkward to hold).

As with any computer-like device, the issue typically hinges on the apps you use. If I merely read a lot of fiction and had another way to get email, I’d get a used Kindle 3 on eBay for about $30. It’d do all I needed at almost no cost. And hey, it has what the Paperwhite doesn’t have, text-to-speech.

If I were more into ham radio than I am, I’d own at least one Android tablet. Far more ham radio apps exist for Android than iOS.

But I mostly write using Scrivener and it’s recently out version for iOS is a delight. A version for Android, if it ever comes out, may be years away. This allows me to retire my sometimes quirky old MacBook and means I don’t have to replace it with another laptop.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to pay Apple’s prices for iPads. There’s a healthy third-party refurb market for them. When I eventually need to upgrade my iPad 3, I’ll be checking out places such as A4c.com. The prices are lower, particularly on older models.

You also don’t pay as hefty a penality for more storage and cellular data (with GPS) as Apple charges. Right now A4c has an iPad Air 2 with 64 GB of memory for $399.95, only $20 more than the same model without cellular. I wouldn’t pay Apple’s price for cellular ($130), but I can see paying $20, particularly since I can turn on and off cellular data by the month.

Apple tends to play a nasty little marketing game. They’ll have a lower-priced model that’s not so heavily overpriced but typically has too-little storage or RAM. To get a model with adequate features, you end up paying about 4 times the market price. That’s less true with refurb models from third parties. Many, I suspect, come from businesses who bought the high-end models in bulk with cellular as a matter of course. Their abundance means A4c et al price them cheaper.

The chief advantage of iOS over Android is the same as it has been for years. That’s the ease with which you can update iOS to add new features and deal with security issues. Buy an Android tablet, and you make be stuck technologically. Buy an iPad or iPhone and you can expect at least three free major iOS upgrades.

Short-term, a low-priced Android device may look cheaper. Long-term Apple iPads, particularly bought refurb, are often the better deal. The real price isn’t the retail price. It’s the retail price divided by the number of days you’ll be using it regularly.

That applies within companies too. When I got my iPad 3, the iPad 2 without a Retina screen was $100, cheaper. I figured that screen was worth the added cost and that’s proved correct. The per-day cost for that marvelous screen must now be down to a dime a day. Well worth it.

The thing is that I am a compulsive reader, but most of my reading is done on an e-ink Kindle. That said, I adore my iPad Air 2 and would not trade it for anything. If something happened to it, I would turn right around and buy another. I have a Fire which I don’t use very much as I have never felt that it had the elegance and ease of use that an iPad does.

I realize that you say you no longer buy apps from independent developers, but Marvin is simply one of the best e-reading apps I’ve ever run across. Not sure that I’d say it justifies buying an iPad all by itself, though.

Many people appear to be quite willing to sacrifice an undetermined degree of security, privacy and market access in exchange for lower initial cost and convenience. The terms of that Faustian bargain are murky and shifting all the time. Thus what starts out as tolerable might one day become both intolerable and inescapable.
We are being very gradually shaped but without our informed consent.

I adore my iPad mini; and like Mary, I’d replace it in a heartbeat. I like the way it simply works, updates are timely and normally don’t cause any issues. I do have a MacBookPro that I took on a recent trip as I wanted the storage and bigger screen, but boy-howdy it was so heavy to lug around. If I could get a decent price for it, I’d sell it in a heartbeat. I’ve had android devices and never have cared for the fuss I had to deal with to keep it going; but I also like that there are options out there for all of us. Congrats on the soon-to-be baby!

I’ve never owned an IPad, so I really have no comments on whether or not you should buy one. Basically I think it is a personal value judgement, and one person will decide “yes” and the next will decide “no” and both people will have made the correct choice for themselves.

I note, however, that you say: “It’s too cumbersome to hold it one-handed”.

I have had this problem with all of my tablets, and I found an inexpensive and effective solution to the problem. Basically, I attached a strap to the back of my tablet, so that I can slip my hand between the strap and the tablet.

The strap is made from two, self-adhesive, peel-and-stick “mounting bases” that are normally sold (in hardware stores) for use with cable ties, and a shoelace that runs from one mounting base to the other.

I don’t own any Apple products, but Apple’s infrastructure makes replacing an Apple device much simpler and foolproof than Android. My coworker’s son broke an Android device, and he was unable to restore games to a saved state, he basically had to start over, but with an iPad it was trivial.

Now that the iPad version of Scrivener has come out, it’s a game changer for my iPad. I have a case that has a built in bluetooth keyboard and it functions essentially like a laptop. By using Dropbox to store my writing, I can seamlessly go from my i-pad to my Windows based desktop without missing a beat. I reblogged a post about the new Scrivener iPad app. https://donmassenzio.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/road-kill-part-26/

I have an original ipad–which I love, but fewer and fewer new apps will work on it. I can’t afford a new ipad, so I bought an Amazon Fire Tablet last February, and wish I had waited and bought the ipad. The battery on the Fire lasts barely a few hours–not a whole day. More than that, you can’t encrypt the new Fire devices, nor can you easily put a VPN on them–which makes it useless for me to use on the internet outside my home firewall. There are numerous VPNs for the ipad. The Fire tablet doesn’t give you easy access to all Android apps–its difficult to use any they don’t provide through their own Amazon app service. That limits your choices significantly. On both Android devices I have, you can’t turn the sleep feature off–you can on the ipad. That may seem a small thing, but I listen to music or audiobooks all day at work, and having to turn the screen back on to turn the device off is a pain. Same for using it in the car. I’m sorry I spent the money on the Fire tablet. That said, I do like my Andriod Blu phone that’s cheap on Amazon. I bought it for music, audiobooks, and ebooks, and haven’t even turned the phone on yet.

I know the iPad likes to be all things in one, but it isn’t the best at everything, so I have different devices. I love my iPad Air 128 for websurfing, reading PDF/CBZ/CBR files (magazines, comics, books with a lot of images), the occasional video, a few games and apps.

I do ebook reading on my Kobo Glo HD. Nice backlight, easily sideloaded with Calibre, seems to work a lot faster than my old Kobo Touch.

I have an iPhone and an iPod. The pod came first, but I still use it because for me 64gb is a ludicrously small amount of storage. Give me a terabyte iPod and I’ll fill it.

I have a couple of 64gb Kobo Arcs (bought the second when they were on sale dirt cheap). Good size for pdf-only ebooks, videos (smaller size is handy when watching something on a crowded bus during the commute), extra music storage (without having to go through the annoyance of itunes).

There have been days I’ve had all of these things with me, though I generally only use two or three of them. I can’t rely on wifi at work or many other places I go, so the cloud is out. Plus, data can get expensive in Canada. I need storage. And I like options.

What thoughtful comments! To clarify, I am not denying that the iPad is a nice piece of kit. It is! Battery life is fantastic, it’s easy to set up and use, and really, they are lovely machines. But alas, we do not live in a world where money is no object. So I have to ask myself, for what I need now in a device…the last gadget I bought to fulfill a need was $158 dollars. The ipad is nice indeed, but is it $341 nicer? And my answer was no. Its extra niceness did not merit that much more money. For a smaller price differential, I may have gone with the iPad Mini. But that is a not insignificant jump.